A
Reading from the Book of Fixing
Guy Benjamin
Brookshire
CHAPTER XLI
One night the Cutthroat drank and drank until darkness interrupted,
buzzing Nightmares in his brains like a wasps’ nest in a
field skull: in the caverns of the storm clouds demon-lice were
bleeding pus, 2) which channeled in a torrent down the nostrils of his
ears, forested with greasy palm trunks, sharpened to impale a vast
canopy of corpses. 3) Their mouths were rotten open, so the ichor
flowed right through their cheeks, and animated their puppet limbs,
which gestured hatefully toward the depths of his brainward abscess. 4)
The sound the ichor made as it gushed in their mouths became
a roaring shot with hissing. So the Cutthroat stumbled around his house
screaming and smashing and raving. 5) He came into a place where his
eyes saw nothing but his braingears stripping in showers of sparks:
there was a cloud of pus-y fog that stretched to the edge of nothing at
all, shot through with nerves of hair-like fluid, which wormed up to
the surface strata forming a bubbleskin. 6) This new made body was
bobbing on a sea of such fluid, amidst drifts of other such bodies
– like pieces of feces. 7) And these bodies themselves had
anuses which spurted out pieces of feces which were bodies themselves
with anuses which spurted out pieces of feces which were bodies
themselves with anuses which spurted out pieces of feces which were
bodies themselves with anuses which spurted out pieces of feces,
smaller and more and increasing. And this went on and on and on; a
slime steadily multiplying in the bottomless gap of what is. 8) His
shrieking and ranting terrified his wife, who had seen him lose his
mind before but always watched him grow a new one. But this time
the murder in his eyes seemed not to recognize his woman, so
she opened up the cellar and came to hide with the prisoners. 9) The
wise-man went out to try to calm the Cutthroat before he killed them
all and began, “An accurate man is a rare and precious thing.
10) Sometimes while solving a mathematical problem, it just requires
more effort than one is willing to invest to figure it out. 11) On the
other hand, some things don’t exist until we name what we
have destroyed. 12) For example, there’s a Dreamer I have
recently made the acquaintance of that has given me food for thought.
He told me the most curious thing: life is the memory of a Dream we
have yet to wake from, and when we recall how it ends we slip into the
sleep in which it occurs. 13) Now that might not cut it with the
learned men of the Schools down in Thalamus: but that’s all
politics, and living for politics is like eating for the privilege of
wiping your ass.” 14) When the Cutthroat smashed the
wise-man to the floor with a single blow, Jack leapt from the cellar
and dragged him out of the path of the rampage. Then he sat down in the
easy chair next to the fireplace and helped himself to tumbler full of
drink, singing a merry song from the better days. 15) The Cutthroat
fixed him cock-eyed before growling, “By these hands at the
ends of my arms more throats have been cut than numbers can name, and
this stomach at the root of my gut has held more oh-be-joyful than
volume can carry. And now another world is opening out through the back
of my brain.” 16) “Can anyone visit,”
asked Jack with a wink, “or how do we know you’re
not Dreaming awake?” 17) Just as Jack leapt over to the couch
the Cutthroat bellowed and beat the chair to bits, “My mind
was made of many minds with faces now before me, 18) rank on rank of
corpses with their noses rotten off, but still they shriek with
demon-speak, and fill my head and home with pus. 19) They say such
things that burn my ears, and come into my stronghold
– some even leave their dirty drawers on the front hall floor
by the door. 20) So I’ll kill everything I see, and beat it
into sausage. 21) And what is left will be the me that lives, to wipe
away the filth that covers me. 22) But there can be no relief, for the
world is only filth, myself the vanishing point of an anal perspective.
23) Everything that is, is simply shit begetting shit – I
swim and float and breath and eat in an endless sea of it. 24) I have
seen into the very knit of the weave at the root of the world. It is
made of filth, so I build a raft of murders.” 25) Then Jack
offered the Cutthroat a drink and a word, “You have been
Drinking to find the black wall. You want to put the edge of creation
under your feet. 26) The future and the past are one darkness that
surrounds us, where everything forgotten waits to take back
what’s been known; murder arcs like lightning from a man who
sees his face in the mirror of the moment where there’s
nothing to be seen. 27) This overpass is so complete, the world below
does not exist, except to form a base as broad as oblivion: what you
need is sleep. 28) I know you for a drunken murderous rapist that lives
off the blood that you lick from your hands: your Nightmare is you live
in the deepest dark and so you think the whole of the world is blind.
29) You have made meat of the abundance of bodies, 30) tried to leave
behind the life (your particular style of Dreaming) that
lives through you in this place it has found. And you see what it means
to gnaw open this artery, the horse is galloping dead without
believing in your Dreams. 31) The meat of your body is trying to kill
the thing that looks out through its eyes, because that part of you is
just smoke above the fire as far as its unconcerned. 32) To live by
dying at different speeds on different days is worse than being an
animal, because they don’t have Dreams to waste. 33) I tell
you Dreams live through you like a brush stroke on the breeze. 34)
Everything then is the single stroke of a brush with infinite bristles
which are endless both in number and in length. 35) We only know the
surface by the colors pulled across, and we only intuit the brush by
its elegant sweep. 36) And when we think we’ve found a
bristle by watching a color go, we find we’ve found a bundle
of bristles together, and a bristle in that bundle is a bundle of
bristles together and a bristle in that bundle is a bundle of bristles
together and a bristle in that bundle is a bundle of bristles together
and a bristle in that bundle is a bundle of bristles together and a
bristle in that bundle is a bundle of bristles together...”
37) And all of this time Jack had been pouring the Cutthroat drink
after drink. 38) The Cutthroat said to himself through squinty eyes,
“Haven’t I met this fellow at the narrow lip of the
inkpot, right before I dive in at drinksend ;
39) Then he
said to Jack, “That Dreamy waste of tonguework makes me sick
down to my nutsackseam, let’s see how you can spin your yarn
after a little refreshment. 40) Have another tumblerfull and
we’ll get down to business, and I’ll show you what
gets me through the night. I might not even skin you alive before I
kill you if my mood improves enough.” 41) And then he slurred
in continuation, “With drink and club I cleared
this valley in a single night of murder.” 42) But Jack could
only watch his father’s ring flash on the
Cutthroat’s finger. Jack let the liquor run out of his mouth
and down the neck of his shirt when they both threw their heads back in
the rush to gulp and guzzle. 43) Then the Cutthroat demanded he
accompany him on a ride through his valley that very instant ,
and
grabbed him by the throat and yelled, “Yi-ha!”
Jack was looking all this time for a way to safely kill him. 44) When
the sky turned an angry violet the Cutthroat burped to Jack,
“I think I’ll just get ready for bed, or have you
seen my slippers?” 45) Then Jack crushed his nodding head
with a rock and slid the ring off his finger, taking the
wise-man’s daughter for his wife in exchange for the ring ,
her name was Jill. At this time Jack took the house for his own and
began to cultivate the valley 46) Jack was old enough to wish he was
younger when he came into possession of the high hanging valley and its
rimland full of ribiers. He spent hard years of labor making the valley
a home for his comfort in age. 47) And the worked earth multiplied his
efforts from splendors to brilliance and glory. 48) Jack cultivated
vines for wines and hives for wax and honey. The shaggy cattle that
waded the weeds became many and fat in his care. 49) Though he took on
hands to help him grow and measure such fine abundance, there was
always too much work to do; in this way Jack became a wealthy man. 50)
Before the hard times hit them like a snowball stuffed with rocks, two
children came of Jack and Jill’s connection, the daughter and
son of the wise-man and Fool. 51) Jill named her baby boy Pineal and
said, “This child is the conduit of longing into
flesh.” 52) Her baby girl Jack named Stinky saying,
“Every time I clean her off she squirts more out
again.” 53) Then the trouble started, 54) and the trouble
liked to never end, just as Jack had learned throughout his youth. For
Jack had made himself a fellow conspicuous for prosperity, in a land of
Cutthroats good for nothing but keeping knives razor sharp. 55) When
the Cutthroats saw a stranger in their midst, they questioned one
another on the fate of the previous master. The Cutthroat’s
wife was now Jack’s servant and told them, “A
Nosepicker has made the place his kingdom.” 56) When the
Cutthroats saw they could not break into the valley by way of his
strong house astride the pass, Jack was forced to constantly range the
peaks they climbed to slaughter his cattle, because they
tried a different way everyday. 57) And word of Jack’s
prosperity spread down to the cities below, because a drought had
turned the crops there to dust.
Guy
Benjamin Brookshire is a writer and editor of apostrophecast.com
living in San Jose, California. He has completed his first novel, A MAN
LIKE ME.
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